Record high daily volumes were reported for London ($3.097bln/day +12.3%), NY ($1,096bln/day +35.1%), Singapore ($481bln/day +30.1%), Japan ($374bln/day +3%) and Canada ($67bln/day +8.5%) with only Australia showing a fall ($151bln/day -14%). London once again dominating the FX market, with volumes in London approaching 60% of global daily volumes.

A quick look at the trend in volumes by instrument shows that FX Spot has overtaken FX Swaps as the biggest traded product for the first time since Oct 11 (as can be seen by the red circles). This may be related to regulatory exemption from reporting and lower capital costs for trading Spot FX.

Top Global FX products

Looking at volumes by client segments and comparing London with NY, we can see that in NY all client segments showed healthy gains, whilst in London only reporting dealers and other financial institutions (including: Hedge Funds, Asset Managers, Pension and Insurance companies – those with a fiduciary responsibility to manage other people’s money) showed gains, possibly driven by increased volatility leading to increased trading volumes.

Also worth noting that Other financial institutions has now overtaken other banks to become the second largest client segment after reporting dealers, and continues to drive growth in volumes. In subsequent posts we will drill a little further into this data.